Laugh: yes because when some guy weeps somewhere in the world there is always some other guy who laughs somewhere else: happy balance! Never fails its normal equilibrium: laugh or cry it all comes out the same in the end!

February 05, 2007

"People of the Book: American Jewish Literature After Mimesis" by Phillip Ernstmeyer

Verisimilitude and its association with mimesis has largely determined the structure of the novel since its origin in 18th Century. Narrative must incorporate certain elements in order to achieve a convincing portrayal of reality. It must have plot: an organized beginning, middle, and end, moving from cause to effect in their natural order, and finally leaving no details unexplained. It must have a setting: a time and locality sustained throughout the narrative; if altered, the alteration must be accounted for within the narrative and its plot. And it must have character(s): agents who act within and compel/are compelled by events in the story; likewise, they must possess unity, a definite identity containing neither contradiction nor insufficient motivation. Very few novels undermine these standards. The American Jewish novelists mentioned earlier — Bellow, Malamud, Roth, and Singer — obey such laws to the letter. Alternatively, Acker, Federman, Katz, and Sukenick are outlaws, renegades of the desert, desperados.

In many ways, the separate literary enterprises which Acker, Federman, Katz, and Sukenick have accomplished can be generally considered “nonmimetic novels.” Sukenick has proposed “a generative theory of fiction” (“Twelve Digressions” 434): a fiction that is written as writing being written. Federman has called novels which practice such a theory “surfiction” (“Surfiction” 7). The “fiction” of the surfictional text would be an excess of fictionality, or over fiction, as if beyond mimetic narrative, separating itself from “reality” while becoming continuous with it. “Rather than serving as a mirror or a redoubling on itself, fiction adds itself to the world, creating a meaningful reality that did not previously exist” (“Imagination” 569). Adding itself to reality, fictionalizing ex nihilo<>, “surfiction” cannot mimic; nothing outside it exists to duplicate. “As such, fiction can no longer be reality, or a representation of reality, or an imitation, or even a recreation of reality; it can only be A REALITY — an autonomous reality whose only relation to the real world is to improve that world” (“Surfiction” 8).

2002 THE TWILIGHT OF THE BUMS (Microfiction, with George Chambers). Altx Press [Boulder, Colorado] Also available as an E- book from Altx.com. German translation (Suhrkamp Verlag), 1998, under the title Penner-Rap. Radio play adaptation under the title The Dialogues of the Bums, Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1997.

2001 LOOSE SHOES: A life Story of Sorts (Fiction in English & French). Weidler Buchverlag (Berlin). German translation under the title Offene Schuhe [same publisher]. Loose Shoes -- Musical composition by Michael Riessler performed in Munich, Ulm, Frankfurt, Cologne, May 2000.

1999 THE PRECIPICE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES (Collected Plays, bilingual edition, English/German). Poetry Salzburg (Austria). Radio play adaptation by Deutschland Radio (Berlin) 1998.

1998 FEDERMAN : FROM A to X-X-X-X [A Recyclopedic Narrative, Edited by Larry McCaffery, Douglas Rice, Thomas Hartl, in collaboration with the author]. San Diego State University Press. Limited edition.

1996 THE LINE (Fiction, chapbook, special limited edition). The Club of Odd Volumes (Amherst, New York). Limited edition. Translated into French.

It was his generosity which initially impressed me, the continuity and inclusion in his storytelling. In fact, being in the same room with Federman is a lot like reading one of his books--sprinkled with double-dashes, at times conspicuously free of punctuation. At other times, he rewrites the story while you watch, and in his transparency, in his willingness to show you the form, you forget there is a writer at all...

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INNER-VIEW IN THE FALL 2006 ONLINE EDITION OF RAIN TAXI...

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